Page 21 of Queen Takes Camelot: Gwen
He knew exactly how to ground me. How to bring me back when I was drowning. Nothing cut through that darkness like pain, sex, or better yet, both.
Guilt strangled me harder than his fingers. My queen had finally called me. She’d claimed me against all odds. How could I still yearn for her knight’s touch, when I had her? It felt so terribly wrong and disrespectful to even…
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Eyes flashing, she leaned up on her tiptoes and glared at me. “You’ve always loved Lance. He’s always loved you. Why would I ever stand between that? I love you both. I’m not offended in the slightest.”
His fingers loosened, making it easier for me to breathe, but he kept his arms around me. With my queen before me, and Lance at my back, the horrible sensation of drowning retreated.
She stroked my cheek, her fingers gentle. As if I might break. “You’ve had this happen before?”
I shook my head. “Not like this. Not this bad. I have memories of drowning, but I’ve never been wet before. How is that possible? From a bad dream?”
Lance rested his chin on my shoulder. “I have terrible memories from our past lives.”
He didn’t elaborate, but we all knew that he still had nightmares of being trapped by Elaine Shalott. Of being raped by her. Repeatedly. Even though he’d never even seen her in this lifetime.
It was such a thing of shame for a man to have been abused by a woman, but especially for a knight and Blood of Sir Lancelot du Lac’s caliber. An alpha Blood, who was also the best and most famous knight of the Round Table. He’d endured so much in the lifetimes of this curse. Though I felt the shadowed places in his mind, and the brittle areas that he feared would shatter one day and endanger one of us, I knew his extreme honor. His immortal strength. His endless love.
He had endured unspoken torment at the hands of another queen because his oaths sworn in blood had demanded it. Because once, a thousand years ago and more, he’d fallen in love with our beautiful queen. He still blamed himself for the wretched centuries of this curse. If he’d never fallen in love with Guinevere…
Then I would not be here. Loving him, and loving our queen.
“I would drown a million times to be here with you both now.”
Gwen laid her head over my heart. “And I would burn in the tower a million times to love you again. Can you tell me about your nightmare? It could be important.”
I wrapped my arms around her and fought the urge to crush her against me. “I suppose it’s from my first life as Bors, when my brother, Lionel, and I were taken by the Lady of the Lake as boys.”
“Passage through water,” she whispered, turning her face up to mine. “But you remember drowning?”
Nodding, I clenched my teeth, fighting to keep control of my emotions. I didn’t want to be swept away into the nightmare again.
“I was also supposedly raised by the Lady of the Lake,” Lance added. “But I don’t remember much. I don’t even remember her name or what the house or castle looked like. Do you?”
I shook my head. “She said something to me this time. ‘The lake knows my name.’ What does that mean? Which lake?”
“I’d hazard to guess that it’s not a specific lake at all.” Mordred sat before his computers, though he’d turned his chair back to look at us. His face was carefully neutral, but I read a deep pang of loneliness in his bond. He wasn’t jealous of our connection to our queen—merely wishing he carried the same level of emotion that bound us to her. If he was tormented by something in his past lives, he’d never said a word. “The Lady of the Lake was probably telling you that if you ever needed passage through the portal to the Otherworld, that your name is the key to open the door.”
Our alpha, always present and concerned with any of our needs, loosened his hold on me and stepped closer to Mordred. A hand on his shoulder, focusing his attention on the other man. Giving him the weight of respect and gratitude for all the work and research he’d done to try and help our queen long before she ever called us. “What burial mound were you thinking of?”
“Newgrange.” Mordred turned back to his screen, enlarging a picture of the famous Neolithic mound. “It predates the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge. Oddly enough, it’s also almost completely surrounded by water, making it at least symbolically an island as well.”
“You think this is a portal to Avalon?” Gwen asked. “Even though it’s in Ireland, right?”
He nodded. “There are numerous mounds like this scattered all through the United Kingdom, but Newgrange is the largest and most famous. It was supposedly the home of the Dagda, a god of the Tuatha dé Danann.”
Gwen paced back and forth, her fingers absently playing with the crescent moon on her necklace. “A god worries me. I’ve gained my power, and I am stronger than Guinevere has probably been in several lifetimes. But even with Shara’s help, I wouldn’t want to take on a god. We barely managed to handle Arthur before he could kill us all.”
Arthur wouldn’t have killed her. The thought of what she would have suffered at his hands made my stomach churn. The wet cotton clung to my chest, chill and damp. An unwelcome reminder of the drowning vision. I pulled the soaked T-shirt over my head. At least my jeans were still dry.
“As long as we’re respectful, I don’t see why we’d have an issue with the Dagda,” Mordred continued. “Supposedly all the Tuatha dé Danann withdrew to Tír na nÓg long ago. If the heart tree can take us somewhere nearby, then we’ve managed to bypasshertrap. If it doesn’t work, we can try Stonehenge or one of the other stone circles, though that’s a little closer to her territory than I’d care to take you.”
“What are the risks?” Lance asked. “Are there any queens in the area that we know of?”
“The closest documented nest that’s well known is actually in Edinburgh, where the Academy of Blood is located. There are several smaller nests scattered throughout the area, but they’re highly localized. Their queens might sense us, but they’re not going to be aggressive unless we come near them.”
“Unless they’re allied withherand notify her of our presence,” Gwen muttered darkly.
Mordred huffed and gave her a long-suffering look. “My queen, I’m mortally offended that you think I wouldn’t have already mapped out her alliances so that we stay far, far away from them.”
